I wouldn't say we can translate *everything* in Egyptian, but nearly. Once I saw an Egyptologist sight-reading an inscription she'd never seen, and it's probably pretty lame how excited I got. *g*
Still, I think I was probably confusing the Mayan mystery of "where did they *go*?" with "what did they write about?"
I don't think there's any mystery about where they went... there are still Maya Indians in Mexico, and they still speak a descendant of the Classical Maya language.
The writing style I would say it more widely-known to be undeciphered is the majority of cuneiform writing, but maybe I only think it's widely-known because I know it. *g*
Well, I don't know if the majority of cuneiform systems are deciphered or not, but there's a variety of them... Sumerian is probably the best known, that's logographic and primarily deciphered. Then there's Ugaritic, that one's a deciphered consonantal alphabet. Which ones were you thinking of?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 01:46 pm (UTC)Still, I think I was probably confusing the Mayan mystery of "where did they *go*?" with "what did they write about?"
I don't think there's any mystery about where they went... there are still Maya Indians in Mexico, and they still speak a descendant of the Classical Maya language.
The writing style I would say it more widely-known to be undeciphered is the majority of cuneiform writing, but maybe I only think it's widely-known because I know it. *g*
Well, I don't know if the majority of cuneiform systems are deciphered or not, but there's a variety of them... Sumerian is probably the best known, that's logographic and primarily deciphered. Then there's Ugaritic, that one's a deciphered consonantal alphabet. Which ones were you thinking of?